Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for delivery of medical treatment by injections throughout a zone of a body. More particularly, the invention relates to automated devices and systems for the delivery and injection of therapeutic agents, solutions or injectates throughout or at locations across a portion of bodily tissue. Additionally, the invention relates to methods of delivering and injecting a solution across a target site within the body for the treatment of that target site.
Description of the Related Art
Hypodermic syringes are widely used in the medical field for administering medicaments. Generally, hypodermic syringes include a needle having a sharpened distal point for penetrating vial stoppers or patient's body. The needle is attached either fixedly or removably to a syringe barrel. In operation, these syringes provide the means to deliver medicaments to a single specific location in the body. In operation, the plunger is depressed into the barrel and the medicament thus discharged. This system, largely unchanged since the invention of the syringe, contemplates delivery of the therapeutic agent at a single location wherein the effect of the therapeutic agent is transmitted through adjacent cells. Problematically, when the therapeutic agent is intended to act against a collection of cells, its effectiveness is reduced and/or delayed by such transmission, even though the overall distance from one side of the collection of cells to the other may be quite small. Practitioners have attempted to overcome this limitation and provide the benefit of a dispersed delivery by simultaneously depressing the syringe plunger with the thumb while also withdrawing the syringe. However, this technique is difficult to learn and is ineffective to properly deliver the therapeutic agent to the desired location in the desired quantities, particularly when the desired location has defined boundaries, such as a tumor.
Additionally, delivery systems have been constructed to provide delivery of a therapeutic agent with an automated system. However, these systems either suffer the same shortcomings as conventional syringes or suffer from the necessity to provide the therapeutic agent into a dynamic system, such as blood flow, which results in the undesirable distribution of therapeutic agents throughout the body instead of localized distribution.
Further, when the therapeutic agent poses a danger to care providers, such as in the case radioactive agents, it is desirable to minimize the exposure to the care provider, particularly by limiting the time of exposure to the care provider, by providing a delivery system which inhibits or prevents exposure, and by providing a delivery system which limits the extent of therapeutic agent used.
Further, it has been determined that, particularly in connection with radioactive agents, it is more advantageous to generate within the body a three-dimensional grid of therapeutic agent injections, such that the effective area of each therapeutic agent injection abuts but does not detrimentally overlap the effective area of an adjacent therapeutic agent injection, particularly beneficial where the therapeutic agent contains a radioactive element, and such that the minimum necessary volume of therapeutic agent is used.
There is therefore a need for a delivery system that disburses a therapeutic agent along a path of a collection of cells in a body by automated means.